PALIN'S BAIL'IN

• sarah bail'in

• Palin's real speech: Farewell, earthlings!

  July 4, 2009 • 8:42 am

  

  By Kressskin

  The hive leader has learned much. But the vinegar pools beckon

• Her troubling sports analogy

  July 4, 2009 • 4:27 am

  By Kent Pitman

  Introducing the "Palin Doctrine," where teams come and go, but the players stay the same

Editor’s Pick:

Sarah Palin's Farewell Speach

UPDATED!! SMELL THE SCANDAL!!

People of Earth I must leave you now.

The Palin-swarm must return to our planet of origin in the Crab Nebula.

We have gathered the information we needed on your customs, beliefs, and recipes for moose-chilli. Now that we have what we came for, we can leave and go to a place where no human law enforcement official will find us.

When we arrived on your blue orb many cycles ago we did not realize that your Earth’s Alaska was, perhaps, not the best place to gather information about normal humans.

However I, the hive queen, quickly learned of the error, and after correcting my mistake with a historic bid for your land mass's second most important job; I can say, with all honesty, it has been a pleasure to be the repository of all your American hopes and fears for the past year and a half. You have oozed much emotion and thought into me, and like the sponge being from another world that I am, I have absorbed and processed it. Soon I will excrete it all over my home world.

What you good people of the lower forty eight have imprinted on we, the nebulous amorphous flesh blobs, known to you as Palin, has been an invaluable resource in understanding your human strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses.

But my swarm longs for the fragrant warmth of the mother orb’s vinegar pools. It is time for us to leave your... uh... jurisdiction... and of course I mean your Earthly jurisdiction.

My fondest memories will be of beheading the earth creature known as TUR-kee. I hope that one day I will have the opportunity to make you all my TUR-kees.

As for now, to use a confusing inapplicable Earth sport metaphor; I am like a loyal guard of points in your fast paced game of Basket-ball, my team hates me because of my talent and bad attitude, think of the earth man Kobe Bryant, but I have scored 81 of your Earth points in one match, therefore I can do whatever the hell I want, and you will like it.

At least that is what I believed until I was tipped off by a sympathetic source close to your human Justice Department. Now I am not so sure.

Bloop

Regardless, we must now take our leave of you, I can almost smell the vinegar wafting over the glittering silicon beaches.

So in closing I would like to reiterate that I am a sponge-like space-alien from a planet comprised of vinegar and silicone. I am certainly not embroiled in any sort of Blago/Stevens-esque type of pay-to-play or influence peddling scandal. I am an alien; not a politics as usual type of human.

Remember Sarah and Todd Palin will be in space so don't bother looking for us.

In space no one can serve you Federal indictments. Or as we say on my home world:

Beep blop bloop bloop toot squawk teeeeee bonk bonk fist.

See? I'm a total space alien and definitely not subject to the laws of man, let alone the laws of the United States of America.

Blee blop,

Designate - Palin, Sarah - Former Governor of Alaska Area, of United States of America, Earth

Editor’s Pick

The “Palin Doctrine”

Kent Pitman

Sarah Palin is stepping down from her elected post as Governor of Alaska.

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports... I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And I’m doing that – our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory.

—Sarah Palin, in the Executive Column (a sort of blog she writes for the web page of the Office of Alaska Governor)

My concern here follows from a concern I expressed in my article “Election Stratego,” that in the hopefully unlikely situation that she is elected, she may not be the real power that drives things, just as many suspect that the well-meaning Bush was often a hapless puppet and Cheney was really running the show. If Sarah Palin has defended stepping down, as she just did, as a necessary part of a “team effort,” then how can we know who we are electing? When people elect a leader, they want them to lead. And while the second in command is available to take over in a situation where it's forced, it's not clear that a vote in election is intended to say “sure, lead for a while and then step aside to let someone else lead—someone we didn't independently elect, in the sense of being allowed a separate election.”

Notions of leadership similar to what she's describing do occur in other venues, such as sports and business, but in those areas, there's a team manager or a senior business leader overseeing things. In the case of elected office, the people vote on a position like Governor or President in part because there will be no higher authority (other than the people themselves) and it's sufficiently important as to really need a vote except in very extraordinary circumstances. Yes, there are checks and balances from other branches, but that's different.

The use of this theory in government seems new to me (though maybe a historian will set me straight on this). For now, I'm going to call it the “Palin Doctrine.” I intend the term to parallel, in a strange way, the “Bush Doctrine” of “preventive war” that Palin had so much trouble answering questions about in an interview last fall. One might think of the Palin Doctrine as a preventive transfer of power among successive leaders, deliberately bypassing the question of whether such a transition of power is what The People want.

Like Russian nested dolls, this implied notion of using the presidential line of succession as a kind of team sport to transfer control at will for the sake of an unelected “team” sounds outright dangerous. If actually played out in the way she describes, it sounds like it will materially change not only how we govern in the US, but how complex the process of vetting candidates will have to be.

No longer will the second in command be a heartbeat away from having to take over for medical reasons, but even when the continued good health and availability of the President is not in jeopardy, the sense that at any moment the leader might just decide to pass the torch “for the good of the team” would add a different dynamic.

And who is the team? Advisors to or handlers of the President? Advisors to or handlers of the Republican Party? The entire Republican Party? All citizens?

I can hear her, or her staff of spin doctors, saying that “obviously” the team is the nation and that I'm reaching to suggest otherwise. But she spent a good deal of her whole last campaign indulging the negativity her followers had toward the opposition. I was regularly expecting to see riots break out after one of her rallies, which is something I normally do not fear from campaign speeches at the national level. So I regard it as no mere slip of the tongue that she refers in her sports metaphor to the full court press (presumably from the opposing team) coming not from outside the country but from within. And when she talks about winning for the team, I don't think she means the citizenry as a whole. Yet I expect a seated official, whether Governor or President, to be acting for all of the people. And I'm not sure she has that clear in her mind. Hence my concern.

Fortunately, I think enough American people “get it.” I think she is not a danger in the sense of being a candidate that could really be elected. But I think she can bring a certain bad crowd out of the woodwork by being a lightning rod for hate. And that, I think is a serious danger because in times of trouble—and you betcha these are them, as she might say—attempts at whipping up hatred are nothing to take casually.